Quarry maternity home,

[Glen in Tinsel Kni]

Hi all

I was born at the Quarry Maternity Home in January 1967 and adopted by a couple in the same year.
My adopted parents have both now passed away and i am interested to find out something about my birth mother.

Was anyone at the home around that time and have any memories of the place and the people there?

I have my original birth certificate with my birth name and the name of my mother and her address at the time, she was from the Chesterfield area but i will keep the rest private for now.

I have been able to trace very little else with this information.

The next step is to obtain the adoption file. There should be some details about your mother, (eg age), whether there is much about your father is another question but the answer will be in the file.  If you have a copy of your full post adoption cert it will tell you which court granted the adoption order. 

[Eilleen]

It has now been demolished 

[Suew65]

I am helping my aunty find her son who was born at The Quarry in October 1962 if anyone can help. She had uploaded to the contact register and also taken her dna but no joy so far
Thank you

[Gillian1947]

I have only just accidentally discovered this website and hence I've only just seen your post. 
I was at the Quarry whilst Sylvia was there.  My baby was adopted at the end of June 1964. I knew Sylvia and remember her quite well.  She was a lovely lady quite a lot older than myself - I was only 16 at the time.

[n1234]

It has now been demolished 

Hi all  it’s not been demolished. The house in the picture at the end of a different street. The house is still there and currently in use as part of Lincoln Minster school not the Lincoln university.
 

[yvdc]

 Hi, I posted this on the other thread about Quarry Home but someone suggested to post it on this one, so here goes....Hello, I have read some of the posts about the Quarry Maternity Home, not far from the cathedral in Lincoln. I am trying to help my husband find out about his birthparents. In December 1960 he was born at the home and was adopted by a couple who, after a settling in period in rural Derbyshire, took him to Burma( Myanmar )as that was where their life was based. His name was changed by the couple who adopted him. A few years ago I did find out a bit about the home itself. In recent years, my husband has decided that he wants to know more about where he came from as he has felt it keenly affects his sense of who he is. With a coup taking place in 1962 in Burma, the family returned to the UK. If anyone has ideas or guidance about how I should begin my search, I would be so grateful.  Thank you, Yvonne

[Glen in Tinsel Kni]

Hi, I posted this on the other thread about Quarry Home but someone suggested to post it on this one, so here goes....Hello, I have read some of the posts about the Quarry Maternity Home, not far from the cathedral in Lincoln. I am trying to help my husband find out about his birthparents. In December 1960 he was born at the home and was adopted by a couple who, after a settling in period in rural Derbyshire, took him to Burma( Myanmar )as that was where their life was based. His name was changed by the couple who adopted him. A few years ago I did find out a bit about the home itself. In recent years, my husband has decided that he wants to know more about where he came from as he has felt it keenly affects his sense of who he is. With a coup taking place in 1962 in Burma, the family returned to the UK. If anyone has ideas or guidance about how I should begin my search, I would be so grateful.  Thank you, Yvonne

The social services operated by the council local to where you are would be the first point of contact. They can offer help and advice for obtaining the original birth certificate and also the adoption file, it's certainly worth asking them for some guidance about contact with potential birth relatives that may be found in the future too as it can be a sensitive subject (especially if circumstances are such that birth family may not be aware that a child was adopted out of the family).  I'm not trying to be negative but it's not always the big family reunion depicted on tv. I found a maternal half sibling within a few days of my initial meeting with the social services via Genes Reunited back when it was a useful resource, they told me I had 3 half siblings on that side and they named my father but asked me not to contact them again and if I did they would not respond. A paternal half sibling found a post I made on here and contacted me some 15 years ago, since then I've met several of them and we have stayed in touch. There were rumours of some other paternal half siblings out there and I've managed to find some of them over the years and we remain in contact with most of them but a couple don't want to be involved.

DNA testing offers an opportunity for finding birth relatives that wasn't available when I first started my search and whilst it can be useful it is obviously very dependant on who has tested. If the right matches pop up it can be a very quick way to find birth relatives but as mentioned above, circumstances may be that they are unaware there is a relative out there and if a close match suddenly appears they may choose to hide or remove their results and/or block contact. Sometimes it can be a bit of a shock and it's a balancing act to try and achieve an outcome everyone is comfortable with. 

[yvdc]

Thank you very much for the detailed reply. I have rung a number for Adoption Support and had to leave a message. I can follow up with an email if nobody gets back to me. I have also put in a request for a birth certificate for my husband's birth name, but I wonder if it gets flagged up on the system as an adoption and not given out, or that it does not include names of any parents. That would be understandable.
We are not looking at DNA searches yet.
As you say, this is a very sensitive subject for everyone concerned. My understanding is that at some point my husband would have to meet up with a support officer as he was born before 1975. It would certainly help him to talk to someone. At the moment he just wants to have an idea of a family tree.

[Glen in Tinsel Kni]

I was born in '66 in Lincoln and had it not been a medical emergency resulting in a hospital birth would probably have been born at The Quarry myself.  When I started my search back in the early 2000's dna wasn't an option but many do take that route as a shortcut to avoid engaging with social services and a 'counselling session ' as some councils clumsily describe it. It's an informal chat and not a lecture despite the poor choice of words.  Some may find it frustrating that the initial meeting doesn't end with names, dates and a detailed story but in my experience it was a good thing, I feel it would have been overwhelming to know everything immediately, I just wish I'd used a 3rd party when initially contacting my maternal family, They may have felt obligated to reply albeit reluctantly and not having the opportunity to speak with them at any length is something I regret. They did know about me (they are 17-25 years older than I am), and have families of their own. Our mum passed away long before I started looking and it would have been nice to know a little about her but it wasn't to be. I respect their decision but i do sometimes wish I could just pick up the phone and speak with my brothers and sisters, just have a chat or send a birthday card.
Enough of my self therapy session!

The birth cert should be the same as any other with date and place of birth and details of the mother, dependant on circumstances the fathers details may be blank. If the parents weren't married then the father would have to attend and give his permission for his name to appear on the cert but, as we all know, what should happen and what actually happens are not always the same thing. I was fortunate that my cert had my mother's maiden name and previous married name as well as the name she was known by at the time but as she was married to someone else when she met my father and he didn't attend the  birth registration his name is not recorded on the cert.